Young man quits job to donate stem cells

A man in Ansai county, Shaanxi province, quit his job after he was refused leave to donate hematopoietic stem cells to a girl he had never met, Huashang Daily reported on Tuesday.

Wang Guangheng, 24, received a phone call about 10 days ago from staff of the Shaanxi provincial branch of the Chinese Hematopoietic Stem Cell Donors Database, after he had just started a job as a driver in Erdos, Inner Mongolia. The call told him his blood matched that of a 10-year-old girl with leukemia who needed stem cell transfusions to save her life. Wang asked his new boss for a week's leave to travel to Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, for tests and to donate blood, but his boss refused.

Wang, who registered as a donor on the database on Aug 4, 2011, quit his new job in the belief that saving a life is more important, and went to Xi'an on Monday to donate his blood.